For about a year I have been using my Nikon D80 with the original neck strap, you know the one that says “NIKON” across the back, Cannon has similar straps that say “CANNON” or “EOS”, while other camera manufacturers do the same. It may be good (cheep) advertising for them, but it is a pain in the neck.

Then this summer I purchased a 80-400VR Zoom. Now the camera is very heavy when hanging around my neck, and swings from side to side when I’m out in the woods bushwhacking, a totally unacceptable situation. A fellow photographer has been urging me to get a Binocular Harness for some time. The local wild bird store was the first pace to look,m and indeed they did have some, but they were elastic, and rather stretchy. I felt that they would not hold more than a light pair of binoculars without sagging down around my knees. What I was looking for was a harness made of webbing, not elastic.

Well, I just kept putting off the purchase till I finally found one by Optec – the same as my fellow photographer.. This harness indeed is made of a 1″ wide webbing and includes plastic snaps to attach to the camera. The while thing is adjustable and quite comfortable.And the original camera neck strap can be used as a backup, while not putting weight on you neck. This harness distributes the weight to you shoulders.

The harness is available at Amazon.com

Oh yes, big lens I’m carrying is a Nikon-80-400mm VR Zoom

There are at least three general classes of consumer GPS receivers; Navigational Devices for use in automobiles and trucks, Hand Held devices for hiking and fishing, and Data Loggers. There are other specialized  GPS Receivers too; a couple others come readily to mind, for Aeronautical, and Crop Spraying to name two.

This review is of a Data Logger, specifically the RoyalTek RGM-3800 Data Logger. Data Loggers have one main purpose, to log their position, and log it internally for later retrieval. One of the popular uses of these devices for the general public is to “Geo Tag” photos. This is done by recording the GPS data in a Data Logger, then when Post Processing the photographs matching the GPS data with the Date/Time stamp in EXIF data from the camera, giving a fairly exact report of where the photographer was when the photo was taken. My only experience is with Flickr.Com, when a photo with the proper GPS data in the EXIF header for a photo is uploaded Flickr.Com will be able to display a map with the location data.

I received a RoyalTek RGM-3800 late last year, and have used it ever since and have been happy with it.

This device is small, 1.5″ x 2.75″ x 1″, but the color makes it look like it came from Apple. It is White – visible if you drop it in the undergrowth while out hiking or taking nature photos. It comes with an 18″ lanyard which ends up being about as bulky as the device itself. The one drawback with this lanyard is that the ends snap together, I wouldn’t trust them to hold if the device is swinging from my neck and it gets caught on a sapling, It could come loose and you’d never notice it, but it won’t choke you. The lanyard is long enough to keep in a pocket or your equipment bag. With no display, it can be kept in a pocket all day. There is no need to have it within easy reach but to turn on and off or replace batteries, once every 6 hours or so.

The only User Interface on the device itself is an on/off button, and a small LED, that indicates when the unit is on and satellites have been acquired. The LED is small, not drawing much battery power.

Battery life is fair. It uses 3-AAA batteries, I use rechargeable NiMH. The life of them is about 8 hours. RoyalTek claims “Over 10 hours”, that is probably with fresh Alkaline or NiCAD batteries. 6, 8, or 10 hours is probably more than enough battery life for a day of photography, but marginal for logging a day long hike. Memory is more than sufficient for day long excursions, I’ll talk about that in a paragraph further on.

A CDROM comes with the device but the includee software runs on Windows (maybe Mac too?). I use Linux so I needed to do some searching for suitable software.

The logging interval is settable from 5-sec to 60-sec, I have set mine to 15-sec and use the first log for the desired minute. I’m not moving fast enough to need any better granularity. There are 3 logging modes,

  • 1 – Date/Time, Latitude and Longitude. ( 650,000 data points)
  • 2 – Date/Time, Latitude and Longitude, and Altitude. ( 500,000 data points)
  • 3 – Date/Time, Latitude and Longitude, Altitude and Speed.( 400,000 data points)

For intervals of 15-sec and 12-hour days that about 180-days.

Each logging session is stored as a separate file, with the Linux software these can be downloaded separately, or dumped all at once into one large file. These files are in NMEA format, and can be converted to .GPX files easily using gpsbabel ( available at http://gpsbabel.org). The RGM-3800-client sourcecode is available under the GPL-v3 license and probably could be compiled for Mac as well. Only standard libraries appear to be needed, I had no problems compiling this on Linux Fedora-9.

What’s my work flow like? Be sure to have a fresh set of batteries, as there is no battery life indicator. I start the logger before I head out for a photowalk. Once I get home I download the entire dataset and convert it into a .GPX file. This all takes just a couple seconds. Then I download the day’s photos from the memory card, with a few hundred images this can take quite a few minutes. Now comes the hardest part of the process. I have some GREP scripts that will search the .GPX file for the first log entry that matches photo’s time, but the log time is UT and the phototime is whatever local time you have set into your camera, this is handled in the script. The script then takes this log entry and formats it for exiftool (another free utility) which then writes the data into the exif header for the photo.  One quirk here with Nikon files, exiftool will only modify an original file, if I rename it the exiftool will refuse to modify it. When exiftool does write the new modified file a backup file is saved.

One word of caution, when uploading to Flickr.com, any file that is GeoTagged will be displayed with the map. I don’t GeoTag all files, preferring to tag only those that need to have their location known. A flower bed in front of some private home shouldn’t have it’s location pointed out to the world.

This Data Logger is available from Amazon.com

Yes, I’m happy with mine and would by the same if I needed a second or a replacement.

Last weekend could be called a Cindy Drozda weekend. It all started early on Saturday morning at the monthly meeting of the Chesapeake Woodurners in Annapolis. Cindy was our featured speaker/demonstrator for the day.

For the morning demonstration Cindy turned and colored a 6-sided covered bowl. It was originally thought of as a natural edge bowl, but to make things easy it was cut on a bandsaw with 6 points – not quite a star. After, or more correctly during, the turning she applied stains. Then after they dried a bit, some times she would hasten the drying of the alcohol base by setting the alcohol on fire. “Since the alcohol burns with a blue flame, and wood burns yellow it is easy to know when the alcohol is done and the wood is beginning to burn.”

For Cindy’s Saturday afternoon demonstration she made a small box topped by a finial. Then on Sunday she led a workshop of about 8 turners, one of which had only turned two other pieces. But she is no stranger to turning – she does wonderful pyrography work on her dad’s turnings.

Here are a few tips on turning Finials.

  • First of all you need dried Straight Grain wood. Burls probably would not hold together. And the pith should not run up the middle of the finial.
  • The tailstock does not support the work, Get rid of it as early as you can.
  • Use a light touch, sharp tool, and careful aim.
  • Oppose the cutting force, use your fingers. If they get too hot then you are putting too much force on them. Just balance the light cutting force.

A few other things Cindy stressed: Supporting with your fingers gives you feedback, both the irregularities as well as the tool force. Sandpaper is one of the most important tools, take advantage of it.

Comparing three different art media, “Wood is subtractive, the shape of Pottery can be changed, Glass in Additive.”

“In any hollowform, the inside and outside curves should have some relationship, but not necessarily the same.”

About 4 years ago I had a week long workshop with Cindy making small lidded boxes, so this was a great review. As usual Cindy’s class was enjoyable, entertaining and most importantly I feel I came away with some new skills and insight on turning.

I’d misplaced one of my notebooks I was using in Portland, but found it this morning. In it were some more tips I picked up at the Symposium.

  • What is your goal for this piece?
  • Put pieces away to review later.
  • Keep trying to improve.
  • Make 20 “Identical” bowls.
  • Good lighting is necessary.
  • If an object is supposed to have a flat make it aparent

I don’t think I have any more notes lying around, but keep watching, I may find more, or pick up some from demonstrators at various club meetings.

It’s out of the bag, but still wet, so as soon as I finish posting this it will go back into the bag for a few months, or more properly I’ll be changing bags every week or so for a few months while it dries slowly.

I’ve finished “roughing out” the piece, and you can get an idea of what I am trying to do. The ends are cracking near the pith, but I plan on carving them to individual feet, and the chucking foot will be removed to leave the bowl suspended. Here’s hoping it all works and doesn’t split any further. The bark edge will come off the feet, but along the sides of the ‘platter’ I’m not sure yet, I’m open to suggestions.

There’s not much to show today, but since I mentioned it in the last posting I thought it might be fun to post the picture.

That’s it bagged in a grocery bag.

Even dedicated woodturners take time away from the lathe to sit back, and breathe fresh air. Yesterday (by the time you read this it could be weeks ago) the Chesapeake Woodturners held their annual Turn-Out at Kinder Park in Millersville, MD. We’ve held our Turn-Out there for the past couple years, a great facility so we keep coming back. This year we had the use of a BBQ trailer. John Abt was our honored chef and did a fantastic job of grilling Brats, Burgers, and Chicken.

But while the food was cooking a couple dozen of the turners and guests took a wagon ride, sans hay, to the Antique Saw Mill that is one of the attractions of the farm. Here are only 3 of the pictures I took, the rest can be found by clicking HERE will bring you to the rest of the pictures. If you want a larger copy of any of them just yell, call or email me.

Sawblade

Cutting

Stacking

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the pictures I promised yesterday. They don’t show much, yet but give you something to think about. If you have any suggestions, leave me comments, If I haven’t gone too far I’ll consider them. Or I’ll try to consider them on the next couple of wood.

We all know what a log looks like, but just to be complete here’s a starter.
An uncut log
Now take a look at the beginning of the roughout.
First stage of Rough out
and another view.
First stage of Rough out

More later as I progress. Right now it is sitting in a plastic bag to slow down drying overnight. From now on I will bag it in paper grocery bags.

Over the next few days I should (notice I didn’t say I will) be posting some pictures. This past weekend a friend’s neighbor took down a Beech Tree and was going to have the wood go to the dump. What a waste! I’m full of wood I will never use, but I did grab two logs.

Today I cut one into half logs, and started working on one piece with an idea that has been rolling around for a while. I’ll be posting some pictures as progress develops.The wood is still green, so after a rough-out it will be some time before it dries to the point I have a finished work.

I entered a piece in the Howard County (MD) Fair this year, as I have done in the past 4 or 5 years. This year I, again, earned a ribbon, Third Place, but a ribbon none the less. I didn’t count the number of entries in the “Small Woodturnings” class, which means the largest dimension was 12″. Medium is from 12 to 24″ and over 24″ is considered Large.

First and Second place were won by a husband and wife ‘team’. Lisa Munzer won a first with a Segmented Bowl made from Maple and Walnut, and Rick Munzer also entered and won with a Segmented Bowl of Maple and Purpleheart. Rick and Lisa are also a member of the Howard County Woodworkers Guild.

1st, 2nd, 3rd Woodturnings

Cherry Burl w/African Blackwood – Mike Vore, Maple/Walnut – Lisa Munzer, Maple/Purpleheart – Rick Munzer

This would have been a hard class to judge. I think I would have ranked them in the same order. As you can see Lisa’s work also won a special judges award.Rick also won a couple ribbons for some of his Intarsia work (sorry, no pictures of that.)

Take a look at your local county and state fairs, they too may have a woodworking category in a “Home Arts”, or similar, section – and have as good a set of judges as we have in our county.

I’ve entered the Maryland State Fair, but as wasn’t impressed with the judging there as I am at our county fair.